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It’s a fair while since we had the excited feels like Christmas day vibe that usually to comes to pass when new grooves from Dalmatian Rex and Eigentones drop through our mail box. For nearly twenty years the Dalmatian ones have been worrying, amusing and confounding the turntables of those fortunate enough to have fallen under their surreally zany gaze. Happily the intervening years have done little to curb their goofiness, their obtuse oddness and wilful refusal to play the pop game. Still as non conformist as ever it’s a mark of pop’s forgiving nature that the Dalmatians exist, they are a welcome escapism from Saturday night pop blandness and follow the leader bandwagon jumping fashionistas, neither are they backed by money hugging power houses or called upon by the amassing little village pop presses with each passing release to sell their one dimensional souls for a clock ticking slither of action you call fame before being despatched in the forgotten box until next time – should they of course survive the ignominy. Instead the Dalmatian ones enjoy splendid isolation content one suspects to playfully busy themselves in their own little universe shut away from the harmful elements of a society by and large setting upon themselves. Getting a bit bleak this isn’t, time for a switch what say you. ’the order of the Dolphins’ the latest opus from Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones is comprised of 14 tracks, old school admirers will be all too familiar with what to expect albeit with added surprises while those newly visiting for a first time in short can expect an odd odyssey of peculiar delights teetering from lunacy to English eccentricity (as on the name checking delights of these isles here super glued onto a hoodwinked throbbing groove ripped straight from a post Rotten Pistols back catalogue by way of ‘singing rule Britannia in my union jack pyjamas’) to three chord wipeouts to weird school wonkiness and Vivian Stanshall flights of folly (as on the quaintly disturbing bandstand bonkerisms of ‘wobbly wobbly girl‘) – and that’s just the first track.

Of course I tease.

One glance of the titles is enough to give the casual subscriber a hearty hint of what lies in store – stuff like ’the punk rock national aeronautics and space administration’ is straight out of the Half Man Half Biscuit sketchbook albeit sound wise gouged with a three chord kick that nods directly to the Ramones while old school Peter and the Test Tube Babies devotees will pogo till cardiac arrest with the goofed up groove of ’sourpuss’ . those fancying their sonics snarling and glue sniffed in agitant fury a la Stranglers might be advised to take issue with the bleached and bitched out shock treated ’where the fuck are the dolphins?’and while your there add in some wonderfully grass skirt shimmy toned skanking love notisms (’fancy the socks off you’). At this stage those still not convinced of the Dalmatian credentials and slightly suspect that their tomfoolery masks heavily their lack of knack to address their serious muso shortcomings might want to get you’re your ear gear around ‘it is time to blow your mind’ – a gloriously amorphous dream drift hypno grooving ambient beauty replete with prowling bass lines and Grace Jones-esque side servings that flirts around the outer edges of Ozric Tentacles universe and hones in on the mind tripped aural galaxies once upon a time harbouring the sorely missing in action of late they came from the stars (I saw them) – class in short. One of the sets highlights and a marked move away from the preset formula is the tenderly mellowing distress applied to ‘drowning in the sea of trees’ which aside impishly channelling the coda of Radio head’s ‘all I need’ by its fall fractures superbly into a heads down sonic maelstrom. From therein things take on an unusually darkly subdued turn with the appearance of the seductively fracturing stream of consciousness poured forth within the austere cold wave chilling ‘dead fish’ as it swims into the eclectic territories of Human League’s ’circus of death’ and the ice cold chamber drone of the silently macabre and funereal ’the burning man’ both perhaps hinting at a new emerging chapter in the Dalmatian evolutionary curve.